


How to Make a Slow-Burning Fuse

by Steals_Thyme (Liodain)



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Community: seasonofkink, M/M, Masturbation, Orgasm Control, Orgasm Denial, Pre-Roche, Rorschach Has Issues, With a Capital I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 08:22:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4172706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liodain/pseuds/Steals_Thyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the part that Rorschach hates the most, the messy aftermath that he can't just push into the darkest parts of his subconscious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Make a Slow-Burning Fuse

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Season of Kink](http://seasonofkink.dreamwidth.org/) 2015, Chastity Devices/Orgasm Control square.

It's the part that Rorschach hates the most, the messy aftermath that he can't just push into the darkest parts of his subconscious, or harness for violence like he can the rest. There's no denying that he's succumbed to his basest desires when the evidence of it is there in front him, cooling on his hands or his stomach or on Daniel.

He's sick of way it makes him feel, railroaded into it by his own weakness, over and over. There is always that abrogation of control, swiftly devolving into something he chases with humiliating desperation. Enough. Enough of that. No more sticky, helpless spasming.

Bad enough to endure it on his own, but to have someone bear witness—to be the _cause_ —is nigh intolerable.

But what he doesn't want to stop is this: Daniel's skin under his mouth, Daniel's hands on the back of his neck, the trust implicit in the exchange of such touches. 

He craves a certain purity, and he has the will to find it.

*

So, he sits on his bed, pants down just far enough, taut across his thighs. He tunes out the sounds of the tenement as he handles himself, ignoring the people around him indulging in their own little sordid affairs. It doesn't take long until he's stiff, even with his demons baying and harrowing; Daniel has been infuriating tonight.

He can't look at his own hands when he touches himself, any more than he can look when Daniel does it to him. He closes his eyes and tips his head back, breathes deep and long as he pulls at himself with rough, short strokes. Soon, he feels that familiar building-up, that herald of shame. 

In his imagination, Nite Owl descends upon him, and he groans in dismay. He lets go of himself immediately, lies back on his grubby blankets and tries to keep breathing, fingernails bruising his palms as he makes his hands into fists. It's a significant few seconds before he starts to convulse, and he guards that hope carefully as he turns his face into his pillow to muffle his degenerate panting.

*

Nite Owl bites him on the shoulder, makes him buck into his hand. He finds he can endure his grip if he pushes the immediacy of it aside instead of focusing on it. It's only later when they're upstairs that he loses it, when he touches Daniel's mouth, presses his fingers against his tongue.

"Is everything okay with you?" Daniel asks, fastening his shirt.

Rorschach makes himself very still. "Why do you ask."

Daniel pauses, fingers at his throat. He seems flustered, all of a sudden. "It's just," he says, fumbling at the last button. "Alright, never mind."

*

One time in his room, desperate to hold off just a little longer, he thinks of his mother. He barely makes it to the sink, retching as he feels his issue sliding into the crease of his hip and then down the inside of his thigh.

He can't even contemplate it for weeks after that, and he makes everything a misery for Daniel as well as for himself.

*

The incessant clatter of the machines works its way through the factory floor and vibrates up the legs of Kovacs' chair. He works furiously, hunched over his cuts of fabric. His face is flushed red with blood, and the rest of him, too, straining against the cheap material of his pants. 

The whistle shrieks at 6pm; he clocks in an hour's overtime just so he doesn't have to stand up.

*

Nite Owl is almost sobbing, back arched across one of his workbenches. Rorschach's hand is over his mouth, and the other is around his cock. Nite Owl has already spent himself, but Rorschach keeps working him anyway, maybe out of spite for how easily he gives it up, without apparent care or concern. His breath is hot, and he licks Rorschach's palm with his broad, wet tongue between his garbled begging. 

Rorschach is proud that this no longer brings him to his knees.

*

One night, he pins a felon against the alley wall by his throat. Later, in his shirtsleeves, he tries binding his scarf tight around his neck. It's an attempt to capture some of the fear he saw in the man's eyes for himself, to see if that helps. It is an earth-shattering failure.

*

"I know something's wrong," Daniel says to him. Rorschach just heaves in a shuddering breath, working against the heat kindling in his chest. He was almost caught off guard, this time. He has not managed to inure himself to Daniel's kindness the way he has to his lust.

"Please," Daniel murmurs, and kisses him again, softly, like before. "If there's something I can do to help—"

"No." Rorschach catches Daniel's wrist before he can touch his throat and bring him further into ruin. "I don't need your help."

*

He lies in his bed and stares at the water-stained ceiling. He thinks of Daniel, of his mouth and the hard curve of his biceps and the warmth in his eyes. He thinks of Nite Owl and his heavy thighs and the line of his body mid-fight. He runs his fingers over himself, feels the tension gathering at the base of his neck and in the juncture of his limbs. He doesn't fight it, and it disperses over him without leaving a mark.

When he brings his hand away, it is dry, and he is satisfied.

*

"Is it me?"

He has Daniel pinned to the mattress. His voice is muffled by the sheets where his face is turned against them. He is mostly dressed, still. Rorschach is entirely dressed.

"Yes." Rorschach pauses, then reconsiders. "No," he says, and leans against Daniel, so he can feel that he is telling the truth.

He pushes back with a supple flex of muscle, Nite Owl's power riding incognito under an oil-stained t-shirt. He still smells like engine grease, is leaving dirty fingermarks on the bed linen. "But you haven't—I mean, not for weeks, now." 

"Don't need to."

"But you still want—"

"Yes."

Daniel twists against the sheets, looks up at him with glittering eyes. Too late, Rorschach realizes he has inadvertently thrown down a gauntlet.

*

"Come on," Nite Owl breathes in his ear, his hand tugging like he's trying to pull it out of him. Rorschach grits his teeth, throws his head back against the basement's cool wall, and doesn't.


End file.
